Best Olympic apps for following the London 2012 Games

The London 2012 Games is something you’ve either got tickets for or not. As it goes, you’ve still got a chance to get some Olympics tickets, but what you can pick up with far greater ease - and often for free - are a whole host of Olympic apps.

So, if you’re keen on following the Games, read on because here for your finger-flicking pleasure are the gold medal of London Olympic 2012 apps. There are plenty of apps out there claiming to offer this and that when it comes to following London 2012 but, if you’ve got these five - and those involved in avoiding the travel chaos around London - then that’s all you’re going to need.

London 2012 Join in

As the name suggests, this official London 2012 Join in app is as much about how anyone can get involved in the Games almost as much as those actually attending them. Naturally, there’s an events calendar which allows you to drill down into each session and enjoy pictures, videos, social check-ins for those going, news and a journey planner too.

On top of that though, there’s also a vast - and we mean, vast - list of other things to see and do as part of the festival going on around London and many other big cities in the country. If you want to know what you can get up to on any given day, then this is the app to download.

London 2012 Results

Another of the official London 2012 apps, London 2012 Results does pretty much what it says on the tin. This time the app is all about the sports events at the Olympic Games themselves. You get a day-by-day schedule, a look at what’s live right now, a breakdown of all the sports and events with news and photos, a medals table and even a section profiling every single athlete involved.

What’s more, much of the content is stored locally, so you’ve no need to worry about having zero reception while in the Velodrome trying to work out who that French chap on the bike is. Finally, there’s a My Games section - set to Team GB by default - where you can set reminders favourites and, yes, access the 2012 shop.

Curly’s Pocket Guide to Sports

So, you applied for hundreds of tickets last year and ended up with Handball. Those wanting to know what any sport that they’re supposed to be watching is all about need to pick up the essential guide to the Olympics, and games whatsoever, that is Curly’s Pocket Guide to Sports.

Presented in an easy to digest and entirely non-threatening style, the app lists 60 or 70 different sports at present, each represented by a card on the UI. Touch that card to flip it over and you can then read all about the various ins and outs of each discipline in a way that makes even cricket and the offside rule look understandable. We kid you not. Again, all offline, this is an absolute essential. Just a shame it’s iOS only right now.

BBC Olympics

The BBC has got an awfully good app for this massive sporting event and it’s basically an exclusive too. Sure, like many of the other mobile applications, there’s an events schedule, news, information about each of the sports, a Team GB section, a medals table and a way to personalise everything. But the real coup here is 24 live streams showing events from the Games.

Yes, that's live video of what you didn’t manage to get tickets for straight to your Android phone or iPhone. Just a shame there’s no iPad version.

Reuters London 2012 Olympics

A superb coffee table flick, the Reuters London 2012 Olympics app is available on iOS only and, while you can get it for the iPod touch and iPhone, it’s really made for the iPad as far as we're concerned. The app is a pictorial stream of all of the images taken by Reuters photographers at the Games.

You get a full-screen view of each of the hand-picked best as well as all sorts of information relating to each of them, including any articles or social reaction. Like all the the Olympic 2012 apps, Reuters’ offer has a schedule, results section and a medal table but the other part that’s actually really useful is that there’s also an Olympic Records section. The only trouble is that they’re not necessarily the same as the World Records.

Dan's love affair with tech began in 1985 with his first computer, the Enterprise 128. After a psychology and zoology degree at university, a career on stage and screen he joined Pocket-lint in 2009. Dan has now moved on to pastures new.